The present invention relates to a method and a system for managing the energy consumption in a manufacturing process. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and a system for managing the energy consumption in a manufacturing process comprising a plurality of individual manufacturing entities.
Energy consumption is getting more and more critical within manufacturing environments and can no longer be buried within the facility cost. With further increasing energy cost there must be a new way to introduce this significant factor into the manufacturing and total cost of ownership (TCO) calculations. Energy, therefore, is becoming more and more of a product cost factor which has to be considered. The problem is to monitor energy consumption down to highest granularity.
In the actual production approach, production is calculated as a function of the variables forecast, demand, capacity, WIP, facility, yield, lead time, supply, maintenance, priorities, etc. However, energy consumption is not considered in the manufacturing planning, at least not in the high granularity down to the single equipment level. To make manufacturing planning more feasible with respect to the total costs, energy consumption of the manufacturing process has to be considered down to each individual manufacturing entity.
Published patent application US20100168897 discloses a control component and method for an energy management unit (EM) in an industrial automation arrangement which is configured to control one of a process, a subprocess and a system part of the industrial automation arrangement. Here, the control component is configured to detect the energy consumption of at least one part of the industrial automation arrangement, and the control component is configured to relate the detected energy consumption to at least one stored specification. The control component is also configured to generate a request for at least one automation component as the result of the relating operation. The control component is configured to transmit a message containing the request to the automation component and to receive an acknowledgement message from this automation component, where the request is directed to changing an operational state of one of the process, subprocess and system part that is controlled by the automation component.
Published patent application US20040225413 discloses an energy evaluation support system and the like which can more efficiently and precisely compute electric power consumption for each of predetermined processing units such as production steps and the like. The energy evaluation support system includes a receiving section which receives a factory design request including a production condition instruction indicating a production condition from the user, a storage section which stores a production device database containing data relating to production devices and a requisite-power supply device database containing data relating to requisite-power supply devices, a processing section which computes energy consumption for each of the production devices and the requisite-power supply devices and for each requisite power type, based on the production device database and requisite-power supply device database according to the factory design request from the user, and an output section which presents the energy consumption computed by the processing section to the user in a predetermined form.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,148,370 discloses a method employed by an expert system for batch scheduling the multiple-pass manufacture of a plurality of parts by at least one parts process, where the parts have a plurality of delivery dates and the parts and parts processor have a plurality of production constraints variable during manufacture, which includes creating a knowledge base of select characteristics of the parts processor and parameters of the parts, and generating a plurality of rules expressing a scheduling and planning strategy that substantially satisfies parts delivery dates, substantially maximizes use of the parts processor, substantially maximizes part throughput, substantially minimizes energy utilization of the parts processor and meets the production constraints. Parts suitable for simultaneous processing by the parts processor are combined into all possible preferred combinations by applying a first plurality of the rules to the knowledge base. Preferred combinations are scheduled for manufacture in batches by applying a second plurality of the rules to the knowledge base.
Published patent application US20090177505 discloses the modeling of a carbon footprint of a supply and distribution chain as a carbon dioxide (CO2) cost that can be considered alongside monetary or dollar costs in supply, manufacturing, and distribution operations. Databases on products and services, supply chain policies, and targets, costs, and/or greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are used by a GHG calculator to output carbon footprint data and/or by a supply chain optimizer to output supply chain planning and policy data. Client computers obtain carbon footprint and/or supply chain planning and policy data by querying a server with access to a database storing calculated carbon footprint data. Input data to the GHG calculator is updated based on choices made by users of the system.
Published patent application US20090281677 discloses systems and methods for assessing and optimizing energy use and environmental impact can be designed to receive energy consumption and emission data from one or more energy consumption sources of a facility over a network. The data can be transformed into a database format that can be processed and analyzed. The data can be validated according to predefined validation rules. The data can be aggregated according to predefined time intervals and stored in memory. The data can be used to generate a report to a user, for example, via a user interface.